


sometimes cupid runs out of arrows

by TheIcyQueen



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, F/M, First Dates, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hospitals, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23283085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: Sam and Josh were SUPPOSED to go out on a date tonight. The problem? Uh, Josh is bleeding.Like, a lot.Typical.
Relationships: Sam Giddings/Josh Washington
Comments: 16
Kudos: 86





	sometimes cupid runs out of arrows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ElliePollie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElliePollie/gifts).



> Hey all, this was written as a fill for a prompt I got on tumblr - I'm trying to get a whole bunch of writing done so I can give y'all something to read during these crazy times!!! I don't post EVERYTHING to my AO3, mostly because I keep my shorter stuff on tumblr, so if you're interested in more of my writing, and/or if you want to drop me some ideas yourself, then hey! You can find me and my writing on tumblr as queenofbaws
> 
> Pleasepleaseplease stay safe during all of this! I hope that everyone's hanging in there <3

“Okay, okay, hang on, I’m…I’m gonna need you to repeat that for me real quick.” There was no way she’d just heard what she thought she had, literally no freaking way. She’d set her phone down on her bureau to do her hair, but Sam quickly picked it up and switched speakerphone off, instead pressing it against her ear. “I think we have a bad connection or something, because I could’ve _sworn_ I just heard you say you’d been—”

“Stabbed,” came Josh’s voice from the other line. He didn’t sound too distraught about it, just sort of…put off. “Yeah, it’s a whole thing, Sammy. Gonna have to raincheck tonight.”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Uh huh, sure. You got _stabbed_. What’s _actually_ going on? If tonight doesn’t work, then just—” That’s when she heard the voices in the background, all of them talking over each other in such a horrible jumble that she found herself lowering the volume on her phone. “What’s all that?”

“Huh? All what?”

“I…Josh.”

“Oooh, _that_. Yeah, that’s, uh…well. That’s…the gang.”

The gang, huh? Yeah, that sounded more plausible. Leave it to Josh to come up with some sort of ridiculous story to cover up for the fact that he was getting cold feet at the last moment. Sam tried to tell herself that her feelings weren’t hurt, but…well, they _were!_ All the flirting, the back-and-forth banter, hell, all the _Facebook likes_ , and now, the night they were supposed to take the dive and actually try the whole ‘date’ thing for real…

And Josh was calling her with some stupid made-up story about being _stabbed_ , of all things. While hanging out with everyone else. Great. Cool. Yeah, her feelings weren’t hurt _at all_.

“If you don’t w…is that Hannah?” She stood a bit straighter at the muffled sound of her voice on the other line, something close to concern beginning to needle its way into her belly.

The noise on Josh’s end was getting out of control, but after a second (and what could’ve been a yell from him to get the others to shut up), his voice came back loud and clear. “I told you it was the whole gang.”

“…Josh, who’s ‘the whole gang?’” Almost as if on cue, she heard _Beth’s_ voice, coming in closer than Hannah’s had been. “Who are you _with?_ ”

“Uh, well, let’s see…we got Thing One, Thing Two, Cochise, aaand Encyclopedia Brown.” He paused for emphasis, then added, “Hey guys, say hi to Sam.”

The voices from the other line absolutely _erupted_ into a clamor so loud and so chaotic that turning her volume down didn’t help—she had to pull the phone away from her ear for a hot second. “Josh I—oh for the love of God—Josh, put Hannah on the phone.”

It became abundantly clear that something was wrong when he did just that. He didn’t crack a joke? He didn’t fight her on it? Oh, this was bad.

This was really, really bad.

She turned away from the bureau, earrings forgotten, and started a mad dash to get dressed. By the time Hannah spoke up a half-second later, Sam was already slipping into her sneakers and frantically searching for her car keys.

“Sam?!”

“Hannah?!”

“Oh my God, Sam! I don’t know what to do, _none of us know what to do_ , there was just so much _blood_ , and it was _everywhere!_ I mean it was _ev-er-y-where,_ and Mom and Dad are going to be _so mad_ , and—”

“Han, Han, hey, slow down. Rewind. What. Is. Happening?”

“Josh got stabbed!”

Balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder, she momentarily threw her arms into the air. Did it help the situation? No. Did it make her feel a little bit better? Well, no, not really, but at least there wasn’t anyone around to see her do it. “Okay, but like…what does that _mean?”_ Something in her head kept translating the phrase ‘got stabbed’ into a strange mental image of an old _Batman_ comic: cartoon Josh walking down the street, probably whistling, and then, from out of a darkened alleyway, _BAM!,_ a mugger in a striped shirt and a black mask jumping onto the sidewalk to slice him open with a shiv.

Did she even know what a shiv looked like? She paused, trying to wrack her brain…and then realized how very stupid of a tangent _that_ was. Back to the matter at hand.

“The _blood_ , Sam!”

“Okay, okay, are you guys at the house? Have you called 9-1-1?”

Hannah made a nervous, wavery sound, her voice growing momentarily distant. The next second she was gone entirely, her voice replaced by one that was just as familiar. “We’re driving to the hospital,” Beth said, calmer than Hannah, but only by a little.

The hospital?! Oh shit. There weren’t words to describe how stupid, how _childish_ , she felt about getting her feelings hurt—if the whole fam-damily was rushing to the hospital, then uh, this was an actual emergency.

“What _happened_ , though?” She grabbed her keys from the side table next to the front door, nearly forgetting to lock it behind her in her hurry. “ _How_ did he get stabbed, Beth?!”

“I, augh. I don’t fucking know, Sam. I don’t. We’re just…look, we’re just getting there, okay? So we’re gonna have to go.”

“Yeah, go, go, go, I’m on my way.”

There was silence on the other line for a beat. Sam glanced at the screen of her phone, wondering whether they’d gotten disconnected, but nope. A second later, Beth spoke up again, sounding slightly less panicked and _way_ more confused. “Wait, why are _you_ coming?”

Sam scrubbed at her forehead with the heel of her free hand before getting into her car. “Uh, ha, well, I’m concerned, obviously.”

“…uh huh.”

The desire to roll her eyes was strong, but this was not the time. “I—”

From the other line, she heard Josh’s voice, distant enough to suggest maybe he was in the front seat and Beth was in the back, mutter, “We had a date toni—” before the car erupted into shouts again. That time, though, it wasn’t nearly as loud. Probably only Hannah and Beth were reacting to _that_ revelation.

Whoops.

“Look, okay, I’m on my way,” Sam said, raising her own voice to be heard over the madness and the revving of her car’s engine, “I’ll see you guys there!” She didn’t wait for a response, partly because, uh, she didn’t particularly want to have the ‘dating her best friends’ brother’ discussion while Josh was ( _potentially_ ) bleeding out. She tossed her phone into the passenger seat and drove off.

Oh, she needed to get that stupid comic-book image out of her head. Had to. That was so not going to help the situation.

It was amazing how she managed to drive, park, and find her way into the emergency ward as quickly as she did; everything that made her the Mom Friend had kicked itself into overdrive, it seemed, and ‘fight or flight’ had _nothing_ on whatever the hell her adrenal glands were doing in that moment.

The first thing she saw when she stepped into the reception area was Chris.

Well, okay, _no_ , not exactly: the first thing she saw was the _blood on Chris’s sleeves_.

“Hey Sam!” For someone who looked like they’d had a real bad tie-dye accident, he sure sounded chipper as he waved her over to the nook where he and Ashley were sitting. “Man, you got here _fast_. That’s gotta be a record!”

She felt pretty safe in assuming Chris wasn’t covered in his _own_ blood. “What happened?” Sam turned to Ashley, ignoring the tiny sound of insult Chris made next to her. In a very middle-school kind of move, she held her hand up in front of his face. ‘Talk to it,’ the gesture said. It was nothing personal…except it _was_. Despite being younger than all the rest of them, _Ashley_ was decidedly the grown-up of the group; Chris was the kid who wouldn’t stop telling knock-knock jokes.

“I’m not totally sure,” Ash said, patting the seat beside her. When she saw Sam had zero intention of sitting, she shrugged her shoulders and continued, “We were hanging out, everything was fine…”

“Honestly? I think Beth did it.”

Ashley whirled around, fixing him with a considerable glare. “Oh. My. _God!_ Beth didn’t stab her own bro—”

“We were all hanging out,” Chris cut in, picking up where Ash left off, “Then Josh went into the kitchen to get something, there was a _crazy_ kind of bang—” at that, he turned to Ashley again, raising his eyebrows in a silent search for confirmation, “—and then Beth started yelling, and then Hannah started _screaming_ …”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Beth stabbed him,” Ashley interjected.

Clucking his tongue, Chris folded his arms across his chest, further smearing the awful mess across his hoodie. “I dunno…she _did_ seem pretty upset that you two were going on a… _date_.” The word was accompanied by a waggling of his eyebrows that was so intense, Sam couldn’t help but wonder how his glasses weren’t sliding off his nose completely.

She watched his display for a second before pointing out, “You got blood on you,” rolling her eyes as he promptly sprang up, pulling his hoodie off amid a wave of swearing.

“They wouldn’t let us back in there because we’re not family. The twins said they’d get us when he got moved to recovery, but—”

“ _Recovery?_ ” She blinked down at her, “How bad was it?”

Chris waved his bloody hoodie like a toreador taunting a bull. “Pretty _bad_ , Sam! I—” There were only a couple other people in reception, but hoo boy, were they staring. Slowly, Chris set his sweatshirt back down, lowering himself into his seat. “Got him real good,” he added, significantly quieter than before.

This was unbeliev…shit. No, all right, it was perfectly believable. In fact, it was kind of, well, uh… _typical_. Not for the first time in her life, Sam had to wonder what she’d done in a past life to wind up smack-dab in the middle of a friend group where impromptu trips to the hospital were the norm. It was always _something_ with them, wasn’t it? Always _something_.

Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen, and when there will still no sign of _any_ Washington sibling, she moved her worried pacing from the waiting room to the hallway, letting her feet lead her wherever they wanted while her brain was stuck on autopilot. The next thing she knew, she was in a poorly lit alcove feeding quarters into a vending machine, stuffing the tiny bags of pretzels and chips into her bag as soon as they fell into the slot. The Mom Friend gene knew no rest; if she couldn’t do anything else, at least she could feed everyone. That was helpful, right? Right?

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, sending her jumping about a mile out of her own skin. The notification said there was a new message in the group text, and she opened it immediately, half out of instinct and half out of worry…only to be greeted by a (very poorly taken) selfie of Josh sitting up on a hospital bed, brandishing a monstrous wad of bandages and gauze on the front of his left shoulder, his expression _maddeningly_ pleased, bordering on out-and-out _pride_. Half of Hannah could be seen in the background, her own face pulled into a rictus of panic between the slats of her fingers. Sam thought Beth was in it, too, but it was hard to tell, considering how blurry the shape on the other side of the frame was—then again, it was easy enough to picture her lunging for the phone as she realized what he was doing. The message under the picture read simply: “i lived bitch!!!”

Already the rest of the usual suspects were replying, the little ellipsis in the bottom left of the text going crazy as everyone got their two cents in. Lots of exclamation points from Jess, lots of question marks from Mike, more than a few people demanding an explanation, a very inappropriate knife emoji from Chris…

Sam stuffed the last of the Doritos into her bag before she rushed back into the waiting room, making it just in time to join back up with Chris and Ash as they were being ushered in to the visiting area.

“…was so mean,” Ash was saying, no doubt in reference to Chris’s questionable emoji usage, “Just _so_ mean.”

“Hey, you laughed.”

“I did not!”

“You _did!_ You snorted!”

“I _scoffed_.”

“Pretty sure that counts as a laugh.”

Sam shot an apologetic look to the nurse leading them back. The lot of them had barely made their way into the recovery bay before something very solid rammed into her, nearly knocking her flat on her ass.

“Sam, oh my God, thank _God_ you’re here!” Hannah pulled away from her vise of a hug just enough to stare wide-eyed at her, “Do _you_ know how to get bloodstains off hardwood?!”

“N…no. I don’t. How much did you _bleed?!_ ” Sam asked, turning her attention to Josh, who was—unsurprisingly—still snapping the occasional picture of the scene as it unfolded.

He jerked his phone away before Beth could snatch it out of his hand. “Enough that they wanna watch me for a bit, sooo…”

Hannah whirled around, knotting her hands in her own hair, “Mom and Dad are going to _murder_ us!”

Next to her, Ashley frowned. “You guys really think your parents are gonna be more upset about the floor than, like, the fact Josh could’ve been really hurt?”

“Yes,” all three Washingtons said at once, the eerie unison of it almost knocking Sam off her feet for a second time.

“…well that answers that,” Chris muttered under his breath.

“Okay, okay, can someone just…” Holding her hands up, Sam desperately tried (and failed) to take the reins of the situation, “ _Please_. In as calm a manner as possible. Can someone explain what happened?”

“Josh got stabbed.”

“Yeah, I got stabbed.”

“No, I…” And now she had to _literally_ bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. The anxiety had mostly melted away by then, and as was so often the case, what was left threatened to bubble out of her in tense giggles. “ _How_ did you get stabbed, Josh?”

“With a knife.”

“Looked like a knife, yeah.”

She dropped her head into her hands.

“Could we maybe move past the whole 20 Questions portion of this and fast forward to the part where you all fawn over me, relieved that I didn’t bleed out in Cochise’s car?” How he managed to do it she wasn’t sure, but somehow Josh caught her eye and shook his head subtly enough that none of the others seemed to notice.

Oh great, that meant there was a _story_.  
  
“I just think maybe if we had all the information,” Sam continued, acting as though she hadn’t caught his clandestine message, “Everyone could relax a little more. Right now Chris has me worried you’re trying to cover for Beth—”

The sister in question whipped her head in Chris’s direction, frowning deeply. “Hartley!”

“You were the first one on the scene! I’m not saying you _did it_ , I’m just saying the timing was _awfully suspicious_.”

“Oh my _God?!_ ”

“Hey, could we maybe not turn this into a game of Clue?” Ashley asked, awkwardly patting Hannah’s arm in an attempt to calm her down.

“But we already know _most_ of the details! We know the crime took place in the kitchen, the weapon was a knife, so all that’s left is who did it, and—”

Where Sam had failed, a simple default ringtone came in clutch: everyone went quiet as Beth looked down at her phone, wincing as though _she_ was the one in pain. None of them had to be mind readers to know what was coming next. “It’s Mom.” She looked from one sibling to the other and clearly saw that no one was willing to take the bullet for her. “Well this’ll be a blast…” There was a quiet sound as she accepted the call, briskly walking out of the room, grabbing Hannah’s wrist as she passed by, both of them disappearing into the hall to deal with _those_ questions.

Josh leaned against one of the bed’s side rails, shrugging his good shoulder, “Never a dull moment, huh?” Then something magical happened. _Truly_ magical, too, the kind of crap so out of the blue and inexplicable that it would’ve felt more at home in the middle of a Disney movie musical number than there in the hospital room. Josh had the decency to look sheepish—maybe even _shamed_ —for what was probably the first time in all of her years knowing him. “Sorry about, uh, messing up date night.”

“I dunno, trauma has a way of bringing people together, don’t you think?” Chris raised his eyebrows as both of them shot him a withering glance. “Wow, okay, just trying to lighten the mood. Sheesh.” He leaned towards Ash, “Tough crowd.”

“Uh huh. You know what? I think I could use a little fresh air. How about you?” Ashley gave Sam a look of her own before nudging Chris out of the door. Socially awkward or not, the girl knew how to read a room, Sam had to give her that; a moment later, the two of them had disappeared into the hall just as the twins had, leaving her and Josh alone in the room.

And oh, she wasn’t about to waste any time on mincing words. “What happened?” she asked flatly, pulling a chair over and finally letting herself sit.

“No idea what you’re talking a—”

“Josh.”

There was that strange, bashful grimace again, so unlike his usual cock-of-the-walk confidence. “You gotta swear to me that this doesn’t leave the room.” He leaned in closer when her only response was an exasperated groan. “I mean it, Sammy—I’ll never hear the end of it if they catch wind of this shit.”

She stared at him for a long while. Part of her wanted to let him stew in the uncertainty of her answer…but the bigger part of her was just relieved he was okay. “Yeah, yeah, fine. Cross my heart and blah blah blah. What did you do?”

“Uh…okay, so I’ll preface this by saying I’m a big enough guy to admit when I’m wrong.”

Uh oh.

“So it was my day to load the dishwasher, right?”

…uh…oh? Sam felt her brow furrow. This really _was_ becoming some kind of weird game of Clue. Problem was, she couldn’t even begin to put _those_ pieces together into a story that made sense.

“Aaand I mean, I was just kinda throwing shit in there, right? Because who wants to waste their time neatly organizing the dishwasher? Well the answer to _that_ is apparently Ash and Beth, because both of them made sure to make snide little jabs about being careful with how you put the cutlery into the little standing basket thing, because ‘ooh no, what if you slip and fall?’ But who slips and falls onto an open dishwasher, right? Who _does_ that?”

Ah. There it was.

 _Now_ she saw the story.

“You,” Sam sighed. That time around, she made no attempt to stop from laughing; she doubted she would’ve been able to hold it back even if she _had_ tried, honestly, it was just so…stupid. So typically, typically _stupid_.

“Me,” he agreed with a laugh of his own. “And I mean, I _really_ fell, too, shit was _deep_.” Without the chaos of the others clogging up the room, the surreal nature of the day seemed to collapse onto the both of them, leaving them to snicker quietly to themselves. “Not much of a first date, huh?”

She shook her head, “You take me to all the nicest places.”

“State of the art,” Josh said, making a grand, sweeping gesture around the room with his good arm. “I’ll make it up to you once I have all my blood back, how’s that sound?”

“How about you just don’t make a habit out of pretending to be a human pincushion when we have plans and we call it even?” She wrinkled her nose up in a teasing smile…and then it occurred to her. “But hey, tonight doesn’t have to be a _total_ wash…”

“Oh no?” She swore she could almost _hear_ Josh’s eyebrow quirk up.

Not that she could tell as she bent down over her bag, rifling through it. She sat back up, dumping the vending machine snacks out onto the foot of the bed with a little flourish of her own. “Dinner’s on me this time,” she laughed. “Sure hope you like Fritos.”

Josh pretended to be taken aback, pressing his hand over his heart in a pantomime of an old silent movie swoon. “ _Samantha_ ,” he gasped, “You shouldn’t have!”

No one would ever suggest it was a _typical_ first date, but in the grand scheme of things, no one could deny it was a _fitting_ one.


End file.
